Ramblings of a Remote Workerhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com
Tue, 24 Feb 2015 22:19:22 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngRamblings of a Remote Workerhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com
Hunting for Remote Working Jobshttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/hunting-for-jobs/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/hunting-for-jobs/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 18:38:04 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6871]]>When I was made redundant from my previous job I discovered that finding a new remote working job wasn’t going to be an easy task. Back in 2012 I did a scout of remote Working policies at universities – most had little to offer. The future looked bleak! Luckily I started work for Open Knowledge!

Since then finding a remote working job has become a little easier. There is now quite a few websites dedicated to employing people

Working Nomads – “A curated list of remote jobs, for the modern working nomad.” Mainly tech jobs.

Remote Employment – Flexible home based jobs working from home. This used to be pretty good for more general types of job but seems to be suffering from a tumbleweed moment :-( These were the guys I won my award off back in 2009!

The Guardian Jobs – They aren’t that clear on whether remote means from home or the middle of the outback but there are some interesting jobs here!

Other ideas

Most of these are shamelessly stolen from colleagues (thanks to people who will remain unnamed):

Check out this Skillcrush post on the 25 best sites for finding remote work.

Look for tech startups and non-profit-sector / open source tech organisations – they are leading the way in remote working

Some general careers sites will let you do searches (and setup saved searches and notifications) and will have an “allows remote working” filter (or if not you can just put keyword “remote” in your query).

Good sites to look at include Hypothesis, MySociety, Mozilla, Ushahidi, Akvo, Automattic, Canonical (although check out Glassdoor.com, lots of dodgy reviews). Wikimedia. Not edX itself but some third-party consultancies based around edX. RedHat claim that 25% of their employees are remote if you feel like going corporate.

Filed under: work/life]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/hunting-for-jobs/feed/0mariekeguykeyboard-417090_640Time teamhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/time-team/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/time-team/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 12:08:59 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6863]]>Time zones can be a bit of a nightmare for distributed teams. At Open Knowledge our staff stretch from the US to India with quite a few places in between. Sometimes when an all-staff meeting isn’t going that well it’s worth reflecting that someone might have got out of bed early for it while another person is ready for a good night’s rest.

The app lets us see what time everyone else is on and where they live, you can also use arrow keys to try out different times – very useful for meeting organising! All the code is available on Github.

Just as an aside I use Worldtimebuddy to help me work out more general time zone queries. There is nothing so frustrating as missing an important meeting because you were working in the wrong time zone!

Filed under: communication]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/time-team/feed/2mariekeguyScreen Shot 2015-02-12 at 11.40.04Teachers, Children and Technologyhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/teachers-children-and-technology/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/teachers-children-and-technology/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 11:47:14 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6844]]>The week before last I presented at the OER Schools conference in Leicester. The event was organised to support a landmark decision by Leicester Council to give blanket permission to teachers in the Leicester area employed by the council to share their learning and teaching resources under an open licence. All slides and videos from the day are now online.

One of the workshops I attended (led by Miles Berry, Principal Lecturer, Subject Leader for Computing Education at University of Roehampton) was looking at OER resource building in the area of computing – the idea behind it was to get students and teachers thinking about attribution and licensing). Some of the tools we looked at during the session made me reflect on a post I wrote about Children and technology back in January 2014.

The new UK Computing curriculum was published in September 2013 and aims to teach children “children computer science, information technology and digital literacy: teaching them how to code, and how to create their own programs; not just how to work a computer, but how a computer works and how to make it work for you.”

This is a significant rethinking and requires work beyond Powerpoint and spreadsheets! In the workshop I attended we were looking at KS1 and KS2 – for a full description of what is required to be taught at those levels see this PDF. At the start of the session Miles pointed out the curriculum clearly states that the should be time in the day for non-national curriculum activities. While many teachers laughed out loud at statement Miles suggested that they should use reference to justify work that they felt was appropriate – such as teaching about open content and licensing.

So here are some of the tools that we looked at or were mentioned during the session:

Coding tools

I mentioned Scratch in my previous post but here are a few tools that build on it:

Scratch Junior is from the MIT who’ve worked on Scratch. They’ve redesigned the Scratch interface and programming language to make it developmentally appropriate for younger children and released it as an app to be used on ipads and phones.

Snap (formerly BYOB) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language. It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks.

The OER Schools conference was an excellent event and for me is the first time I’ve really felt that open education and OERs is becoming mainstream and part of people’s everyday working practice. Open education, and open learning and teaching practices in particular, has a great deal to offer the distributed world that we live and work in. Young people need to learn about the brave new world we live in and be able to embrace the opportunities it brings. I’ll be looking out for any new work in this area!

Miles has made his slides on how ‘to create a medium term plan to teach an aspect of IP or open licensing to primary pupils’ available from Google docs.

https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/teachers-children-and-technology/feed/3mariekeguyOER-banner-1024x257-1024x257InOK:FM – Connecting through musichttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/okfm-connecting-through-music/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/okfm-connecting-through-music/#commentsMon, 02 Feb 2015 09:10:27 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6826]]>We all know that being a remote worker gets a bit lonely – it’s great to be able to reach out to colleagues when you can. I’ve written before about our efforts at creating our own watercooler spaces at Open Knowledge. In that post I said:

One of our team is a DJ on the side and he shares Spotify playlists with us most Fridays. These playlists are great and get us talking.

The fab Christian Villum who creates our playlists has now taken things one step further! He, and his OK:FM posse, are beginning to pull together our own OKFM radio station – be it an online station that exists through crowdsourced playlists!!

He began by asking the staff to suggest songs for the Open Knowledge “Songs About Change” playlist. I think the topic was chosen in response to our recent summit.

Christian then compiled all the suggestions (see some of our suggestions below) into a playlist, so that we have a proper soundtrack for the weeks to come! Here’s the Spotify playlist for Changes.

The plan is to collaborate on future playlists on areas we are interested in! And there may even be a Twitter account for OK:FM in the pipeline. Watch this space! Music really is the universal language!

Filed under: communication]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/okfm-connecting-through-music/feed/1mariekeguyScreen Shot 2015-01-30 at 14.06.41Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 14.04.53Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 14.05.01Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 14.00.33Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 14.05.12Open Knowledge Summit: Working on our blindspotshttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/open-knowledge-summit-working-on-our-blindspots/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/open-knowledge-summit-working-on-our-blindspots/#commentsWed, 28 Jan 2015 10:41:57 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6785]]>Last week our internal Open Knowledge Summit took place at Downing College, Cambridge. The summit is a meetup of all Open Knowledge staff, where we put our laptops away and spend time working in groups on different key topics. As a dispersed organisation getting together physically at least once a year is essential to ensure we can function as a united and effective organisation.

Amazing work colleagues is what it’s all about!

While the previous two summits I’ve attended (written about here: July 2013, January 2014) have focused on our mission and external face this year we spent 5 days looking at how we work internally. Our sessions were kindly facilitated by Penny Handscomb from Omidyah Network, Fiona Thompson (our interim CEO) and Dirk Slater, founder of Fabriders (who facilitated last year’s retreat).

Open Knowledge is an usual organization, made up of a dispersed team and as such many issues that might not be so significant in other organisations get amplified. We also have to add into the mix that we are a non-profit with a core mission around openness and community building. Key issues for us are: building trust (of our management and of each other); internal communications; clarity around responsibility; rethinking of organisational structure; transparency of processes (including financial) and staff employment contracts.

You little RASCI!

One of the tools that we dedicated considerable time to during the week was RASCI, a form of responsibility alignment matrix. This is a way of ensuring clarity around strategically important decision-making. It can also be used for task implementation. RASCI stands for:

Responsible – The person responsible for the decision

Accountable – The person ultimately answerable for the quality of the decision (the buck stops here…)

Support – Those allocated to help complete the decision making process

Consulted – Those consulted about the decision (two-way communication)

Informed – Those informed about the decision once made (one-way communication)

In the past quite a lot of confusion in the organisation has resulted from failure to specify a responsible individual and from misunderstanding by staff around who would be consulted.

In the Hopbine pub for a board games night. We liked ‘open data man’ in the Dweebies card deck!

Personal and Organisational Values

We carried out a series of enlightening exercises looking at values (both personal and organizational) and seeing how conflict arises when we feel our values are compromised. Here we had a look at the ladder of inference which leads us to jump to conclusions. During the week there was some great sharing as we started to recognize when this was happening!

Although I won’t share our list or internal organisational values here are a couple of my favourite quotes from the session:

Conclusions

I’d be lying if I said that the summit was easy, or even that enjoyable. It was hard work, complicated and at times extremely uncomfortable. In some ways it reminded me of the our Google Hangouts Christmas party – awkward but necessary. Asking difficult questions of yourself, or of your organization, is not a simple task but it can move you to a different, and hopefully better place. So by the end of the summit it felt as if we were all finally on the same page. The plan is now to take what we’ve learnt, sprinkle it with a little goodwill and move forward! Fingers crossed!

Our annual cheese competition. This year I won with a Wookey Hole Cheddar!

Filed under: open, summit]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/open-knowledge-summit-working-on-our-blindspots/feed/0mariekeguyAmazing work colleagues is what it's all about!OKchangeIn the Hopbine pub for a board games night. We liked 'open data man' in the Dweebies card deck!blindspotsMistakes are your friends, learn from themIntegrity is to do as you say and say as you doPick your battlesOur annual cheese competition. This year I won with a Wookey hole Cheddar!6 tools to help you manage your work more efficientlyhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/6-tools-to-help-you-manage-your-work-more-efficiently/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/6-tools-to-help-you-manage-your-work-more-efficiently/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 09:30:19 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6769]]>Happy 2015 Everyone!

We’re going to kick start the new year with a look at some new tools to help you be more efficient in the new year.

This post has been written by Monique Craig, a passionate blogger and marketing specialist who works for Oneflare, an online marketplace which connects customers with local service providers.

***

All remote workers will at some point in their freelance operation face one great challenge – getting things done without any external supervision. If not for the deadlines that remind us about our work, we’d probably just end up flooded by everyday activities and forget that we had any projects to complete at all.

Fortunately, technology comes forward to help remote workers improve their concentration and their productivity – here are 6 new and lesser-known tools that can revolutionize the output of any freelancer who longs for that spark of inspiration to come their way.

This tool is perfect for brainstorming – after signing up, you’ll get access to a board where you’ll be able to create a mind map. You can add links, images and other media, connecting the dots in different ways to reflect your priorities. Once completed, the map can be easily shared with other people. Once they sign up, they’ll be able to see the map and edit it. Bonus point? The tool features a small chat box for real-time feedback and discussion.

This is an app that takes the ‘to do’ list making to the next level. Instead of writing things down, first you need to actually do these things and then capture all your completed tasks in the app. It’s perfect if you’re working with a team and want to track the project progress. The app will create a history of all your ‘dones’, which you can later show to your supervisors, without wasting time to compile a coherent list of tasks completed in a certain time frame.

We all lose a lot of time on unproductive habits. This tool will be perfect for either those who want to get rid of a habit that disrupts their work schedule or those who find it hard to establish a good habit that promotes productivity.

If hitting a gym three times a week or performing a backup procedure at the end of each working day is a challenge, the app can help you face it. Habit List will simply keep you motivated by giving you a buzz for repeating a desired action. Before you know it, the things you couldn’t get used to will become your new habits.

This tool will provide you with a wide range of functionalities to keep your projects on track. You can create, assign and schedule tasks for yourself and your team members, later tracking their progress. It works across all kinds of devices and operating systems – the tool works great especially for dispersed teams, which can be updated at any place and time.

Integrated with Google, Pocket is an app for easily saving all kinds of web content – articles, video, images. All your items will be stored in one place and you’ll be able to later view and organize them on any device – even offline! Perfect for those who get easily distracted by cool web content and lose lots of time browsing it.

This tool is a great alternative to other file sharing platforms, like Google Drive or Dropbox. With its intuitive drag and drop navigation, you’ll never lose time on searching and uploading your files. A single file or a collection – called a crate – can be shared by means of a single URL. If you’re a cloud enthusiast, you’ll simply love this tool.

Nobody promised working in remote to be easy. Still, all tools listed above might be just perfect for seasoned, as well as beginner freelance professionals wishing to improve their productivity and get more things done in less time.

Filed under: guest post, technologies]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/6-tools-to-help-you-manage-your-work-more-efficiently/feed/2rwguestmoniqueMindMeisterIDoneThisHabit ListProducteevPocketLets CrateSeasons Greetings and enjoy your offline time!https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/seasons-greetings-and-enjoy-your-offline-time/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/seasons-greetings-and-enjoy-your-offline-time/#commentsFri, 19 Dec 2014 09:35:44 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6761]]>Sometimes you end up in a situation when you are working more but there seems to be less time. I think that happened to me this year!!

In January I moved from working part-time to being full-time. As my children have got older my hours have crept up and this year it was hard to say no to full-time work. Working from home means that the hours I work are flexible (a total necessity for me) but now work seems to eek into every part of my life. Since our last house move 3 years back my computer sits in a part of the front room, so it is now permanently on and permanent seeable – even when I’m cooking, helping the children with homework or even reading a book on the sofa. Add in phones, ipads and laptops and I seem to be unable to switch off. And as a homeworker interaction with humans, other than via Skype, seems to go down as my online time goes up.

I realise all this isn’t ideal. Not only that it goes against the advice I’ve oft given out about the work/life balance.

However it is not only me that is always online – my children (now 7, 10 and 12), despite our efforts to ration, seem to be connected a lot more too. It’s hard to moan about all of this, after all my career has been built on the Internet, but I think I am really starting to see the value of taking time out to think. I just don’t know when I can schedule it in…

The upside of all this extra working is that we’ve had a few nice holidays this year and I have turned off the electronic appliances for those. Next year my husband and I are off to Iceland for 5 days – which I’m really excited about. I’ve also tried to participate in more offline/out of work activities. I do Zumba, Tae-kwondo, support our school and am in the local Friends of the Earth group – but often work puts a kibosh on these due to travel time.

I suppose a question for me right now is how can I keep my head clear in a world that is pretty much all online these days? I’ll be giving it some thought over the Christmas break. I’d really appreciate any suggestions!

As Dr Seuss said: “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

But then I think of the adage – old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative. ;-)

Hope you all have a great Christmas and Happy New Year!

Filed under: general]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/seasons-greetings-and-enjoy-your-offline-time/feed/0mariekeguykidsOpen Education Data, Video Streaming, Wine and Cheesehttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/open-education-data-video-streaming-wine-and-cheese/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/open-education-data-video-streaming-wine-and-cheese/#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 09:32:46 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6752]]>Last week I presented on Open Data in Education at the LTI NetworkED Seminar series run by the London School of Economics Learning Technology and Innovation Department. The talk was videoed and streamed and I just had to share my favourite image Tweeted by Deb Baff from University of South Wales!

My talk on screen while Debs drinks wine and eats cheese!

I was a little unsure of the crowd so ended up giving a very broad overview covering open data, open data in education, relevant datasets, how we can use open data sets to meet educational needs, learning analytics, and the main related challenges. Everything went in the mix!

Filed under: events, video]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/open-education-data-video-streaming-wine-and-cheese/feed/2mariekeguyMy talk on screen while Debs drinks wine and eats cheese!MOOC Miseryhttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/mooc-misery/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/mooc-misery/#commentsTue, 04 Nov 2014 10:03:17 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6746]]>So I’m one of the many who have failed to finish a MOOC [completion rates have been given as low as 10% – see this Time article with links to stats, Katy Jordan gives a completion rate figure of 13% – 40%, there are also more reports on the OER Research Hub website. The MOOC in question was Stanford’s Open Knowledge MOOC – and I did write a few posts about the topics.

Students completing, or not completing a MOOC, continues to be a hot topic in the Open Education world. For those of you interested in the discussions then I can recommend Martin Weller’s post ‘MOOC completion rates DO matter‘ as a good starting point.

For me the problem has been an ending project with deadlines set in stone, a holiday and a need to spend every other non-working moment doing family chores. I also think motivation, or lack of it, played a part. Participating in a MOOC felt a little like a busman’s holiday and maybe I should have been learning about something different from that which makes up my daily workload.

Anyway I just felt I should come clean. Maybe there will be more time for me and MOOCs in many moons!

Filed under: MOOC]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/mooc-misery/feed/5mariekeguyBy b3d_ on Flickr4 Things I Don’t Miss About the Officehttps://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/4-things-i-dont-miss-about-the-office/
https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/4-things-i-dont-miss-about-the-office/#commentsMon, 03 Nov 2014 10:57:51 +0000http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/?p=6740]]>After moving to Italy from the UK for a change of lifestyle Gemma Wilson began to miss her old marketing role back in the UK. She opted to join the rapidly expanding remote worker workforce and has agreed to share with us 4 things she doesn’t miss about working in an office.

Gemma writes and shares many posts on the Meetupcall (a tool which makes it simple to arrange conference calls with people anywhere in the world,directly from your calendar) blog. She writes from her home in Italy on real experiences that she has uncovered through working remotely.

If you have some “things you don’t miss about the office” then share them with us in the comments!

***

This year I decided to jump ship and try out the increasingly popular method of working; remote working. As I’ve already covered previously, remote working is certainly not all about sitting in your pajamas and enjoying daytime television.

However, one of the main things I’m happiest about is that I’m no longer confined to a traditional four walled office.The last thing I would wish on a person is having to spend decades under the glow of industrial lighting in a noisy office. Seeing as I’m a little cynical by nature, I thought I’d share some of the things that I don’t miss about working in an office and why.

Irritating Employees
You know who you are. No one wants to hear your life story or the current “woe is me” situation that you are dealing with for the millionth time. This is a workplace I am here to work, I am not your therapist. In fact, there is no one here that is medically qualified to help you. So please, go back to your desk and do some work, so I can do mine. You know, that thing we’re getting paid to do?

The Commute
Ok, I admit it, this is the easiest one. In my previous jobs I had a commute of 45 – 60 minutes per day. This isn’t necessarily bad, but that was nearly an hour of my day spent on driving. That meant I had to fuel up roughly £150 per month. Now that my commute is literally 20 seconds to my computer, my fuel budget is zero. That’s money that can be used elsewhere.

Food
I don’t miss the smell of burnt coffee because someone is careless in the “how a coffeepot works” department. And for the last time, no reheating fish in the microwave! How many times do you need to be told? And what is it about offices that cause people to bring in junk food? I know sitting at your desk all day with some high calorie diet is a perfect combination, but I don’t miss it. Now that I work from home I decide what food is around me and it’s a lot cheaper making my own lunches than feeling obliged to have to tag along on ‘lunch dates’ while paying a small fortune per day just for a sandwich. Without junk food around me I am not tempted to grab a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps. I have even started going to the gym after work; especially now that I don’t need to spend money on fuel and office takeaways.

Take a pick from the fruit bowl!

Meetings
I don’t miss meetings at all. Previously, I used to have meetings about meetings. Or I was often collared into an irrelevant meeting just to fill chairs around a boardroom table. Nothing drives me closer to insanity than wasting time. Many meetings were simply that, at least in my case. Since working remotely in my new job, the meetings now actually have a purpose; but it’s once a week and to discuss important things, like the next project, or just a catch up on how things are going; and I appreciate that, especially being 1000 miles away from the office. Now it means I have more of my day to be productive and finish my tasks.

I’m sure there are many more things I don’t miss about being in an office, but these are the first ones that come to mind. This isn’t meant to say that working in an office is bad or shouldn’t be done, just that it’s not my cup of tea, especially now that I’ve experienced working from home first hand. Going through this exercise has also shown me that maybe I should post the things I do miss about working in an office. Surprisingly enough, there are a number of things, but I’ll leave that for another time.

If you work in an office, what drives you nuts about working there? What do you hate most about being in an office?

Filed under: culture, food]]>https://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/4-things-i-dont-miss-about-the-office/feed/1rwguestgemmaTake a pick from the fruit bowl!